370 Original Articles. [July, 



of the youngest and most sprightly, and dedicated the " fairest of 

 stars" to the goddess of beauty. Looking back on these memorial names, 

 and the ideas connected with them, from our present standpoint 

 of augmented knowledge and lessened reverence, it is easy to believe 

 that among the bards of antiquity, as among the poets of our own 

 time, the standard of astronomical knowledge was below the philoso- 

 phic level of their age. Yet Lucretius shows no such confusion of 

 thought as occurs in the glittering verses of Pope, who transforms the 

 simple Homeric simile — 



" as when in heaven the stars 



Around the shining moon look beautiful ; " * 



into the gaudy — 



" Around her throne the vivid planets roll 

 And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole." 



Coming to modern times, when the Earth took her place in 

 astronomical systems as one of the planets moving round a central 

 sun, the idea of a common origin for the whole manifests itself in 

 different ways : one general direction of their motions nearly in one 

 general plane ; one law of their periods ; analogies of figure, of rota- 

 tion, of borrowed light, of attendant satellites ; all concurred to justify 

 the supposition of the planets possessing one common character of 

 constitution, adaptation, and use. Not that those ideas of common 

 origin and similar composition are to be found clearly traced out by 

 the immediate followers of Copernicus, though Kepler furnished the 

 planets with inhabitants, and Brunus and Cusanus allowed the sun 

 and fixed stars theirs too. Not even among the contemporaries of 

 Newton was there enough of acquired knowledge in regard to many of 

 the phenomena to suggest a really general speculation as to the begin- 

 ning of the solar system. The argument from analogy and the fitness of 

 things, was indeed strongly felt and strongly urged in the seventeenth 

 century, so that, to take no other example, Christian Huygens, writing 

 to his brother Constantine, said : — " A man that is of Copernicus's 

 opinion, that this earth of ours is a planet carried round and enlightened 

 by the sun, like the rest of the planets, cannot but sometimes think 

 that it's not improbable that the rest of the planets have their dress 

 and furniture, and perhaps their inhabitants too, as well as this earth 

 of ours, especially if he considers the later discoveries made in the 

 heavens since Copernicus's time, viz. the attendants of Jupiter and 

 Saturn, and the champaign and hilly countries of the moon, which are 

 a strong argument of a relation and kin between our earth and them, 

 as well as a proof of the truth of that system. "I 



Huygens, it is well known, bestowed great attention on Saturn 

 and his rich retinue of rings and moons. Speaking of Cassini's 

 observations with long telescopes, by which the inner satellites of 

 that system were discovered, he in some degree anticipates by nearly 

 a century the thoughts of Bode and Olbers, when declaring his expec- 



* 'fls 8" dr' iv ovpavif affrpa <paetvr)v a/xcpi ffe\r)vr)v — (patver' apnrpeirea. 

 t ' Celestial Worlds,' Ed. ii. English translation, 1722. The work was first 

 issued after the death of the author in 1684. 



